Women contribute important insights in agricultural research. Whether as government researchers, university professors, or senior research managers, their skills and perspectives are essential for addressing the unique and pressing challenges of all farmers, particularly female farmers. In addition, recruiting from only male candidate pools hampers efforts by African agricultural research agencies to hire the best candidates, regardless of sex.

These are a few of many good reasons why African countries should ensure that women are well represented among their agricultural researchers.

The number of women researchers rose in both absolute and relative terms between 2008 and 2014—and in 2014, an average of 24 percent of full time equivalent researchers in a sample of 40 African countries were female.

Obviously there is much more progress to be made. An in-depth look at the data reveals that representation varies widely between countries, and women tend to be in less senior positions.

What obstacles are women agricultural researchers facing? What can help overcome them? ASTI’s gender-specific data provides an illustration, but much more information is needed to answer these questions. Success for African farmers—both male and female—depends on it.

Countries in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) are vastly underinvesting in agricultural research, an area proven to have positive impacts on agricultural productivity, incomes, nutrition, and food security. But how much, exactly, should they be investing? The answer has traditionally been a target set by the African Union and United Nations that assumes national investments should be proportional to the size of the country’s agricultural sector in all cases: at least 1 percent of the country’s agricultural gross domestic product (AgGDP).

However, as a recent blog described, ASTI has produced a new, more nuanced method for determining agricultural research investment targets that are most appropriate and attainable for each country. The measure is based on the argument that smaller, more agroecologically diverse countries have different research investment needs than larger ones with more homogeneous agricultural landscapes.

The new measure that ASTI developed—the ASTI intensity index—adds four additional weighted ratios to the mix: those related to the size of the country’s economy, its income, its potential for “spill-over” use of knowledge produced by its neighbors, and the diversification of its agricultural outputs.

As the recently published 2017 ASTI Synthesis Report illustrates, this country-tailored measure provides a fresh perspective on the state and extent of agricultural research underinvestment in SSA.

First, it debunks the myth that all countries must invest at least 1 percent of their AgGDP. For many SSA countries, the 1 percent investment target is simply unattainable—and not worth striving for. In Ethiopia and Nigeria, for example, investment targets of around 0.4 to 0.5 percent of AgGDP would be much more realistic. Likewise, countries like Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe are already investing very close to their optimal levels, regardless of their varying distance to the traditional target.

Small countries like the Republic of Congo, Gabon, Lesotho, and Swaziland, however, should be able to reach intensity ratios much higher than the traditional target: between 2.5 and 4 percent of AgGDP. Irrespective of which intensity measure is used, many francophone countries are significantly underinvesting in agricultural research. These include Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Niger, and Togo.

Another important use of the intensity index is to calculate the agricultural research investment gap: the difference between a country’s actual level of research investment and its estimated attainable investment level, as measured by the highest investment level among comparable countries. Based on this calculation, regional investment in agricultural research in 2014 could have totaled $4 billion (in 2011 dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity)—a great deal more than the $2.5 billion the region actually invested that year.

In other words, the region’s gap between actual and estimated attainable investment in agricultural research was $1.5 billion in 2014 alone. Previous years saw similar gaps.

This raises an interesting question: what might African productivity look like today had all these billions been spent?

ASTI’s latest data collection and analysis from Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) exposes a persistent problem and a drag on sustainable development efforts: Growth in research spending is lower than for other kinds of agricultural investment.

Why is this happening, and can anything be done to reverse this imbalance?

Under the 2003 Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), countries committed to spend at least 10 percent of their budgets on agriculture, with the goal of achieving 6 percent annual growth in their agricultural sectors. In 2014 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, heads of state reaffirmed their support and confirmed that additional investment was needed to meet this target.

The good news is that substantial progress has been made towards these goals.

After a long period of neglect, SSA governments on average more than doubled their investments in inflation-adjusted terms during 2000-2014. Many SSA countries ramped up investments in areas such as farm support and subsidies, training, irrigation, and extension. However, growth in agricultural research investments fell behind.

There is well-documented evidence that agricultural research investments in SSA offer high returns compared with investments in other agricultural inputs. So why aren’t African countries investing more in an area that would both benefit their economies, and help them reach their CAADP growth targets?

Lag time. The returns to investment in agricultural research are substantial, but are realized in the longer-term. Policy makers have more incentive to steer investments towards areas where they can show constituents results within the time frame of their terms of office.

Farmers lack political clout. Though they are the main beneficiaries of agricultural research, farmers are not in an ideal situation to advocate for increased spending. Although smallholder farmers constitute a significant share of Africa’s population, they are widely dispersed. Many also lack the social, economic, and educational resources to engage in collective action to effect policy change.

Donors rank other goals higher. Since the 1990s, donor priorities have focused on structural adjustment reform and privatizing public activities, which diverted funding from agricultural research.

Government research budgets focus on the short-term. A country’s budget process itself can be a barrier to the funding of agricultural research agencies. Rather than determining budgets based on a thorough assessment of a country’s long-term research needs, governments often allocate funds on a fixed, incremental schedule.

So what can be done? Raising awareness of these political roadblocks is the first step. Another task for policy makers and research agency leaders is to diversify their funding sources, to avoid over-reliance on donors. Some research agencies, for example, have been able to raise funds from the sale of goods and services, taxes on commodities, or private sector investment. These sources will differ by country, but the importance of including research in the agricultural investment mix holds true for all countries in SSA, especially as they strive to reduce poverty and hunger through their CAADP investment commitments.

See more findings and analysis of research investments in SSA in the full report.

This new report—and related data and analysis—finds that, although SSA countries have made progress honoring regionwide commitments to agricultural support such as outlined in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), growth in agricultural research investments has lagged considerably behind spending on other agricultural areas, such as farm support, subsidies, and irrigation.

The data cover key indicators on agricultural research investments, human resource capacity, and research outputs in the region. The report highlights various challenges:

Agricultural research spending and human resource capacity both grew in SSA as a whole during 2000–2014, but results were uneven.

Underinvestment in agricultural research continued and many countries remained dependent on volatile donor funding.

In a large number of countries, a high proportion of agricultural researchers qualified to the PhD-level is approaching retirement age. This, combined with high shares of more recently recruited junior staff, could result in significant knowledge gaps and jeopardize future research outputs.

Outdated research facilities and equipment are impeding the conduct of productive research.

Taking into account these challenges, the report outlines a number of policy implications for SSA governments.

ASTI analysis has also resulted in new national spending targets for agricultural research, based on characteristics of each country’s economy and agricultural sector. The report finds that certain countries are close to their attainable investment levels, while others have the potential to invest much more.

New tools, platforms, and activities were among the topics of discussion at a recent gathering of ASTI’s national focal points from Africa and South Asia.

The review and strategizing workshop—which followed the completion of data collection rounds in the two regions, and marked the mid-way point of a 4-year phase funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—took place November 21-22 in lush garden surroundings near Uganda’s Lake Victoria.

With attendees from anglophone and francophone African countries, as well as Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan, the event marked the first time ASTI has joined national focal points from several regions, speaking several languages. The result was two days of lively discussion and cross-country learning and networking—with some fun social time as well.

As new survey rounds are set to begin in 2017, the ASTI/IFPRI team took the opportunity to gather feedback on a number of new developments, including an online method of collecting data, online access to agency-level data, and new methodologies for analyzing a country’s investment in agricultural research (the “ASTI intensity index”) and the health of its agricultural research system.

The team also announced the launch of a new activity, the ASTI Country-level Impact Project, which will examine how ASTI data is being used to inform national agricultural research policy, and how these efforts can be enhanced. This groundbreaking, two-year project will develop and test impact strategies in three pilot countries—Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania—with the aim to create an adaptable framework for the other countries where ASTI works.

One of the most exciting new developments is ASTI Connect, an online platform specifically designed for country focal points. The platform includes a tool to analyze detailed data from national research agencies, a new online survey manager to help focal points more easily upload completed survey forms, and a library of training and capacity building resources.

Most innovative is the platform’s “community” section: a kind of Facebook for ASTI focal points. Here collaborators from IFPRI and partner countries can post questions, comments, event announcements, and impact stories—and any platform member can respond.

The workshop was also a chance for ASTI collaborators to listen to each other, and many participants shared stories of how the data has made a difference in their country.

For example, in Ethiopia, ASTI data helped influence decisions to upgrade researchers to the PhD level, increase the national budget for research, and more than double salary and benefits for agricultural researchers. In Burundi, ASTI data led the national agricultural research institute to create a staff training plan, and currently three of its researchers are pursuing PhD degrees. And in Kenya and Swaziland, ASTI data has contributed to the reform and restructuring of the national agricultural research systems.

Participants shared these and other experiences both in workshop discussions and at a lively poolside reception—and promised to continue the conversation online, saying “see you on ASTI Connect!”

Nigeria has long been heavily dependent on oil to drive its economy. But with today’s historically low oil prices, its economy is suffering and its leaders are looking towards other sources of revenue. With Nigeria’s abundant natural resources and potential, agriculture is an obvious choice.

Policy makers, including the president and the minister of agriculture, are recognizing that research in new technologies and innovations is crucial for the country to realize its agricultural potential, increase production, and grow economically. Nigerian agricultural research has not had much impact in the past, due to underfunding and institutional and human resource restraints. A new proposed reform is planned to turn this situation around—and ASTI data can serve as a catalyst.

An ASTI delegation, including ASTI head Nienke Beintema and senior research assistant Gao Lang, recently visited key partners in Nigeria. Although the purpose of the trip was mainly to help encourage progress on collecting new data, discussions quickly turned to the renewed emphasis on agricultural research and the plans for reforming the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN).

The vision for a reformed agricultural research system in Nigeria is bold: to model after the successful institutional structures of some of the world’s leading agricultural R&D councils, particularly the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa). As ARCN Executive Secretary Prof. Baba Yusuf Abubakar, a key driver of the reform, explained, the reform would transform ARCN from a coordinating to a managing council, harmonizing the activities and funding of all 15 national agricultural research institutes with a single governing board and secretariat. It is expected that turning these research institutes into research centers will allow for better management of research activities, ensure delivery of demand-driven agricultural technology and innovation, reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks, and encourage a competitive and motivated staff.

The ASTI team and Abdullahi Mohammed Nasir, ASTI’s current focal point, discussed supporting capacity building for a strong monitoring and evaluation system in this new framework to enable the council to track progress in implementing its objectives.

The ASTI delegation also met with Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs and member of the Committee on Agriculture. Dr. Abdullahi is an ambassador for agricultural research and a champion of the proposed reform. It is a happy coincidence that Dr. Abdullahi is also a longtime friend of ASTI: he was previously special assistant to Prof. Abubakar and programme manager for planning and institutional development at ACRN. As such, he served as the key focal point for ASTI data collection in Nigeria before joining politics.

“Senator Abdullahi is very passionate about the role of agriculture, and the need for research and innovation,” Beintema said. “He realizes that agricultural transformation and growth are the twin motors of economic development, particularly with the fall in price of crude oil.”

ASTI’s institutional-level investment and human capacity data will play a key role in the strategic planning phase as well as for monitoring and evaluating the reform’s implementation. ASTI is currently updating its dataset for Nigeria, which has been expanded to include output indicators. The new datasets and Nigerian factsheet are expected to be released over the next couple of months.

As Dr. Abdullahi said, “The country has to move from an oil dollar to an agricultural dollar. In the beginning there was agriculture, and in the end there will be agriculture.”

Although Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) has significantly improved its agricultural performance since the mid-1990s, debate is ongoing as to whether the region will be able to withstand growth in the coming years. In particular, the region’s agricultural productivity growth continues to lag behind the rest of the world, growing at roughly half the average rate for developing countries; growth in land and labor productivity has been modest; growth in cereal yields is still low in almost all countries; and fertilizer use remains very low. Two recently released IFPRI discussion papers offer new possible explanations for the puzzling phenomenon of agricultural growth in SSA.

The first paper, Inputs, Productivity, and Agricultural Growth in Africa South of the Sahara, finds productivity to be the main driver of agricultural growth in SSA in recent years. In the case of poorer countries with low labor productivity and low input use per worker, increased productivity resulted from increased input-use efficiency. Countries with higher output and input per worker also increased their input-use efficiency, but in addition they benefited substantially from the adoption of technologies developed elsewhere.

One reason why poor countries with low input levels per worker find it more difficult to benefit from new technologies may be That these technologies require a very different input mix that the one used by producers in poor countries. Advanced countries develop technologies compatible with their own input mix (such as high levels of capital and chemical inputs per worker), but such technologies are less effective in poor countries where the input mix is very different (low levels of capital per worker and intensive labor). Advanced countries using the most productive input mix can produce 60 percent more output per unit of input than SSA countries, and these differences could increase in the future.

The second paper, Agricultural Intensification in Africa: A Regional Analysis, focuses on the role of fertilizers in the various intensification pathways that SSA countries follow. Results indicate that differences in agricultural growth patterns are driven by relative land and labor abundance and are affected by the region’s differing agroecologies. Countries with low population density (half the countries in SSA) increased output by expanding crop production into new land area, reducing fallow periods, and increasing double-cropping. The contribution of increased land productivity to output growth in these countries is low, and fertilizer use per hectare has not risen. In these countries, fertilizer seems to be used to expand crop land but not to increase yields.

On the other hand, countries with high population density show a substantial contribution of land productivity to output growth and a positive but low correlation between land productivity and fertilizer use. A possible explanation for this is the differing agroecologies of the countries with high population density. For example, root and tree-crop systems require lower levels of fertilizer than cereal-based systems. The importance of root and tree-crop systems in countries with the highest levels of population density (Burundi, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda) could explain their relatively low level of fertilizer use compared with countries with cereal-based production systems (such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi). Of the total land suited for crop production in SSA only 18 percent is better suited to cereals than to root and tree crops, and 70 percent of that land is located in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Results outlined in these two papers offer significant implications for policy, as they show that the slow pace of technology adoption and productivity growth in SSA could be because the available technologies are inappropriate to local conditions and the low levels of capital available. First, in areas suitable for cereal production, low population densities make advanced technologies inappropriate unless complemented with capital investment to increase labor productivity. The best strategy for these countries appears to be labor-saving technologies that accelerate the incorporation of new land into production and create incentives for increased fertilizer use as countries approach their land frontier. Second, labor-intensive technologies are best placed to succeed in countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda because more than 60 percent of their potential agricultural land is located in favorable agroecologies with high population densities. For those agroecologiesproducing root and tree crops like cassava, plantains, cocoa, and coffee, Africa will need to develop its own Green Revolution. This will require more investment in agricultural R&D because tropical crops benefit less from research by high-income countries, which generally focuses on crops and livestock production for temperate climates.

It is hoped that this research will contribute to bring a new perspective on the appropriateness of technology choices to the ongoing debate taking place in SSA.

As the world’s population continues to expand, ensuring that food production can meet the growing demand is an ever-mounting challenge. Climate change, soil degradation, and volatile food prices further threaten food security at a time when increasing agricultural output is paramount.

Regional spending on agricultural research and development (R&D) must double if the countries of SSA are to meet the recommended United Nations (UN) and African Union’s target of investing 1 percent of agricultural GDP in public agricultural R&D, not to mention the even more ambitious post-2015 recommendation that low- and middle-income countries ramp up spending on agricultural R&D by five percent from 2015 to 2025.

The report highlights additional challenges to national agricultural research systems:

Low staff retention and qualification levels: Civil service recruitment restrictions, low salaries, and inadequate funding have prevented many public agricultural research institutions from competing for, training, and retaining staff; in addition, a very large share of senior researchers are approaching retirement

Low female participation: Although female participation in agricultural R&D has increased in recent years, women have less influence on decisionmaking and policy because men continue to dominate in senior research and management positions.

High funding volatility: Volatile fluctuations in agricultural R&D funding exert negative impacts on agricultural research systems by impeding strategic planning, undermining the conduct of research programs, demotivating staff, and eroding prior progress, all of which affect the quality, quantity, and efficiency of research outcomes and their ultimate impact on agricultural productivity and poverty alleviation.

High donor dependency: Significant shares of government funding are generally allocated to salaries, leaving many countries dependent on donor and development bank funding to support the day-to-day costs of operating research programs and developing and maintaining R&D infrastructure; in addition to increasing funding volatility, high dependence on donor funding has the potential to skew national research priorities.

African governments and research agencies are limited in their choice of options to address the many challenges they face in developing their agricultural research systems because of funding constraints. The ASTI report lists various successful policy changes already adopted in certain countries, which can offer valuable lessons for other countries.

“It is critical that African countries invest more in agricultural research to ensure that they can feed their populations,” said Beintema. “Underinvestment, inadequate human resource capacity, poor research infrastructure, and a lack of coherent policies continue to constrain the quantity and quality of research outputs in many countries.”

New work is underway to develop stronger integration between partnerships and technical research and analysis in support of the next phase of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) – and specifically the CGIAR response to and support for the Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa (S3A). Efforts for this new activity build on the strengths of on-going work of programs such as ASTI, HarvestChoice, ReSAKSS and Africa Rising to strengthen increased engagement in the larger science and technology landscape. This includes developing the tools, technologies and delivery systems necessary to make progress on the targets and goals for CAADP’s next phase of implementation.

A meeting was organized and hosted by the new IFPRI-based S&T Partnerships in Africa team on behalf of the CGIAR Consortium, and held in Washington, D.C. on September 29 and 30, 2014. Entitled Support of Scientific and Technical Partnerships in Africa, the meeting aimed to activate the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the African Union Commission (AUC) and the CGIAR Consortium. In attendance were over 30 partners from the African research for development institutions, development partners and colleagues from CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) and Centers.

Building on the good progress made over the past few years on the CGIAR alignment to CAADP, initiated through the Dublin Process, the next step is to develop activities in support of targets and goals listed in the Malabo Declaration to deliver on the next phase of CAADP in Africa.

The two-day meeting addressed three main topics:

How CGIAR will respond to and support the implementation of the Malabo Declaration through supporting theS3A, which has been led by FARA over the past year and will be launched formally in Johannesburg in November;

The role new technologies and virtual technology platforms will play in the delivery of the Science Agenda, and how to conduct the collaboration between CGIAR, FARA and the SROs to deliver, and;

In follow-up to the Climate Summit held that week in New York City, a session was held to discuss how the AUC and CGIAR, including CCAFS and others, will come together to deliver on the technical research and implementation at the country level on Climate Smart Agriculture.

Working with ASTI and several other key partners, we will expand our reach to a wide array of partner programs and institutions and help “connect the dots” by creating new ways of sharing information, communications and research among partners, and finding innovative ways to move together to address country-led priorities to tackle poverty and hunger.

African agricultural research spending increased by 40 percent during 2000–2011, which was largely driven by increased spending in just two countries: Nigeria and Uganda.

Investment levels in most other countries are still well below the levels required to sustain agricultural R&D needs. In 2011, only 10 African countries met the NEPAD/UN target of spending 1% of agricultural output on agricultural research.

Donors and development banks remain an important funding source for African agricultural R&D, but are also main drivers of funding volatility.

Despite rapid growth in the total number of agricultural researchers in the region, many countries continue to face serious capacity constraints, which has been accelerated by the aging of more qualified researchers.

This highlights the urgent need to recruit and train the next generation of agricultural scientists.

There are many encouraging signs that African agricultural research is moving in the right direction, not in the least thanks to an increasing number of recent (sub-) regional initiatives. Nonetheless, much more is needed to tackle the remaining challenges, which the Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa is set to address. The Science Agenda is based on the belief that African agriculture is too important to be outsourced to international investors and that every country requires a basic science capacity as an essential part of an agriculture-led social and economic transformation.

ASTI indicators provide a useful benchmark of the current status of agricultural R&D investment and capacity in Africa and for monitoring future progress of the Science Agenda, which is currently under final review for the adoption by AU Heads of Government in July 2014. The continuous monitoring of agricultural R&D investment and capacity in Africa is an effective tool to hold governments accountable for implementing the necessary policy changes and funding allocations needed to meet the objectives of the Science Agenda. Indicators play a key role in driving future change.

Forthcoming ASTI outputs for Africa over the next few months include a series of country factsheets, a regional report, datasets, and a revamped ASTI website.